Glasgow Crimefighter by Les Brown

Author:Les Brown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781845028015
Publisher: Black & White Publishing
Published: 2014-02-24T04:30:00+00:00

11

WAS SHERGAR UP A CLOSE AND DID BIBLE JOHN SLIP THE CUFFS?

No murder inquiry in the recent history of the Glasgow police has made more headlines, provoked more theories and spawned more articles and books than the still-unsolved case of the man – or men! – nicknamed Bible John. What is not in dispute is that three young women, out for a night at the dancing in Barrowland, one of the city's most famous dance halls, were strangled by a mysterious killer. The victims – Patricia Docker, Jemima McDonald and Helen Puttock – all died in circumstances that were, in some ways, strangely similar. I was by now in the Serious Crime Squad and solving murders was our daily business. In the normal run of events, I got involved in this complex and puzzling case which dragged on for years and is still ‘open’ to this day.

Viewed from the inside, the mystery of Bible John was as intriguing to the detectives involved in it as it was to the millions who read about it almost daily for years. It was Scotland's biggest murder hunt with more than 100 detectives working on the case and more than 50,000 statements taken. Everyone involved has a theory – even thirty-seven years after the news of Pat Docker's rape and death first grabbed the headlines and sent frissons of fear running through the minds of the thousands of dancing-daft Glaswegian women who flocked to the spangled glamour of the many dance halls to escape life in drab tenements and housing estates. Some observers of the case now believe that, despite the similarity in the killings, the murders were the work of more than one man. Who knows? But at the time it seemed that a serial rapist and killer was hunting down his victims in the Barrowland with the swing music of the era echoing off the walls, and the bright lights sparkling, as he chose his next victim.

The name Bible John was the invention of famous Glasgow crime reporter John Quinn who, in one of his stories, put together some of the evidence against the man he called ‘a dapper dancer of death’. John came away from a briefing by Detective Chief Inspector Elphinstone Maitland Dalglish, at that time in charge of the case, with the knowledge that the suspect was probably called John and he was thought to talk to dancing partners of a strict upbringing and a parental attitude critical of drinking. He also tended to talk about the Bible. Given this info by the cop known to the press as ‘Elphie’, John Quinn gave the killer the inspired nickname of Bible John. It stuck.

The investigation struggled right from the start because of a Glasgow tradition. A night at the Barrowland attracted men and women on the hunt for bit of romance or some serious winching, possibly in a darkened close, when the music finally stopped. And, for a variety of reasons, customers of the Barrowland, in particular, didn't want too much to be known about their Friday and Saturday nights at the jiggin’.

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